


where will you run to now

by nutellamuffin



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Drabble, Eventual Fluff, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, and really caspian went through so much, i'm just so soft for their friendship ok, we can't just expect him to be all hunky dory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25740931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutellamuffin/pseuds/nutellamuffin
Summary: caspian is eighteen and he is cold and the woods are dark. (caspian is not a man, caspian is a boy with a sword, and the wind is chilling him to the bone as it whips his hair around his face, and the trees are looming, whispering, haunting him.)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	where will you run to now

caspian is eighteen and he is cold and the woods are dark.  _ (caspian is not a man, caspian is a boy with a sword, and the wind is chilling him to the bone as it whips his hair around his face, and the trees are looming, whispering, haunting him.) _

for the first time in his life, his sword is heavy on his hip, and he feels as though he might be dragged down by it.  _ (down to the ground beneath him, that will surely give way and the mud will swallow him, and the trees who are haunting him will laugh and watch him drown.) _

and there is no badger. there is no waking up in a cabin and being offered soup, there is no sun shining through the trees in the morning he awakes.  _ (there is only his uncle. and caspian has no horn, and the ivy vines from the shadows in the dark are curling around his ankles, and his hip suddenly has no sword. and his uncle raises it, and caspian hears the trees whispering  _ **_just like your father_ ** _ , and he does not awake.) _

caspian is twenty two and he is choking, and the ship that rocks him no longer lulls him to sleep. he can breathe if he only does so, but he cannot, someone has their arms wrapped around his chest and is squeezing,  _ (just like the ivy, just like the darkness,)  _ and surely his ribs must break but they are perfectly intact.

and there is a ringing, and undeniable ringing in his ears but from nothing. and it’s drowning him,  _ (just like the trees, just like the mud,)  _ drowning out any noise, and he wants to slip his fingers in his hair and pull just to distract himself.

and he wants to get  _ out. _ he has but one conscious thought and it is that, it is the innate desire to leave, the need to run, the necessity to hide far, far away and never return. to the ship, to telmar,  _ to the castle, all stone and cold and bloody,  _ to this body. this body that tethers him here, in this room, but moreso in this life, this life that weighs on his shoulders like boulders and mountains and  _ knives and ivy and bloodshed, _ and he has never wanted out more than he does right now.

and there is lucy. for a moment, for a single moment that turns his blood to ice, caspian does not recognize her. she is saying something, and he cannot hear her, and although he still feels like his lungs are being crushed, she isn’t touching him.

“you’re safe,” she is saying, and it comes to him slowly. “you’re safe, caspian. no one is going to hurt you here.”

he does not believe her. he  _ cannot _ believe her. not when the shadows in the corner of the room are laughing like the trees did, not when he does not have his sword on his hip and that can only mean someone else does, not when he feels weighed down like the darkness is still choking him and he is being dragged into the mud by ivy around his ankles.

but his sword is across the room. and the shadows shift and disappear with the light changing in the cabin, and lucy is right, no one can hurt him here. because this is his ship, and he is far away from that  _ bloodstainedcoldemptystone _ castle, and he does not have to run anymore.

he feels as though he should say something, and his voice stops in his throat.

and lucy, she only nods, taking his trembling hand in her own once she saw that he could breathe, and instructed him on how to do it better. and it is like someone had uncorked his lungs, for the air came rushing in like lake water splashed on your face, and he takes a deep breath.

lucy smiles and says, “are you feeling alright, caspian?” and he cannot bring himself to nod. perhaps he should have, since lucy’s smile is like sunshine  _ and she should not have to deal with him, a voice in the back of his head says,  _ but lucy’s smile merely changes to one that holds more sadness in it, and she squeezes his hand.

“shell shock.” she adds, and caspian blinks, his voice coming to him for the first time.

“pardon?” his voice startles himself, hoarse and strained thin and breaking, and he looks away momentarily as if to consider it.

“sometimes when you . . . go through something traumatic, it changes you,” she explains calmly, her eyes simultaneously pleading with him to understand and telling him it’s alright if he doesn’t, “in the way that if you think of it again, it might cause you something called a panic attack. it’s mostly caused by wars. back home, we call it shell shock.”

lucy is so young, caspian thinks, to be sitting at his bedside and holding his hand, trying to bring him back down to reality and to be telling him what’s going on inside his head. 

_ it’s mostly caused by wars. _ maybe that’s why he awoke like this most nights, cowering from the shadows and grasping for his sword to battle nothing, lungs full of air and yet empty, running from the world on his shoulders. or perhaps it is something more.

“can it only be caused by war?” he asks, tentatively, and he does not look at her, but she understands. he has found his voice again, also, and he does not know if he wants it.

lucy’s voice is a thousand lifetimes softer when she says, “he cannot hurt you anymore, caspian.”

caspian does not know whether he believes her or not.

**Author's Note:**

> lucy calls it shell shock because that was the coined term for PTSD in the 40s.


End file.
